In Part 2 of Shop Talk With Master Riggers, we welcome back Mike Scheidt, GM of Garner’s Towing and Daniel Williams, Manager of Southwest Towing, who continue their in-depth conversation about some of their most memorable recoveries. They made our jobs easy, as we just sat back and let them share their experiences and it was quite entertaining. These two can definitely host their own podcast about this fascinating industry. Click play to listen.

Transcription

 

Laura Dolan:

Welcome back everybody to Traxero On-The-Go Episode 11, featuring Daniel Williams and Mike Scheidt. You’ve been patient long enough, the suspense for part two is finally over. We left off with Daniel talking about one of his most complex recoveries. Now, it’s Mike’s turn. Take it away, Mike.

Mike Scheidt:

We had a gas tanker roll over in downtown West Palm Beach and literally came inverted where it rolled it all the way over and it sat down on the vapor recovery system on top of it and-

Shelli Hawkins:

So, this is what kind of tanker again?

Mike Scheidt:

… we went down there.

Shelli Hawkins:

What kind was it?

Mike Scheidt:

Gasoline tanker.

Shelli Hawkins:

Okay. Explosive.

Mike Scheidt:

This goes back to 1995, yeah four or five, and our fire department in our city called us out there and then the company called their own environmental company out there to drill it, because this was the standard operating procedures. “We’re going to drill it and we’re going to pump it off.” We were talking to them, said, “Yeah, okay, that is the standard.” I said, “We don’t need to, but okay.” I said, “But you should have us hold it before you start pumping it off.” “Nope, we’re good. We’ll call you when we need you.” So, literally, they pushed everybody aside, pushed us aside, and we were probably four blocks away staged, and they drilled every single compartment at the same time before they even pumped the first one off. And we were sitting there, we had lunch, we were sitting there-

Daniel Williams:

This doesn’t end well, does it?

Mike Scheidt:

No, doesn’t at all. So, we’re sitting there and all of a sudden everybody’s running towards us, the fire department, the police department. “We need you down here. This thing is turned over.” Because what they did was they started pumping it off. Well, they didn’t realize that the tractor’s still hanging in the air. It brought the whole thing onto its side. Well, they’d only pumped off one compartment. So, they lost 4,700 gallons, if I remember correctly, into the storm drains-

Daniel Williams:

Because they pre-drilled it.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes, into the storm drains. West Palm Beach is an inter-coastal city, which leads into their coastal.

Laura Dolan:

Oh, great.

Mike Scheidt:

So, it created a catastrophic nightmare for the Coast Guard, the city, the fire department. They spent millions flushing out storm drains. And after we were done we had a debrief and they brought in probably about 150 people in there and they crucified every single one of them except for us. And when we were done, the mayor, the chief of the fire department, a lot of them said, “These are the only company that had their together.” Basically, exactly what he said, right here. He said, “These guys right here. They told you what was going to happen. They’ve done it their whole lives and you guys didn’t listen and you did it your way.”

And that started the effect of training there and then we started training them saying, “Listen, we don’t need to take 12 to 15 hours to pump these things off. They can be stood up loaded. It’s not as bad as you think.” So, a lot of training and using tankers and using water, which is much heavier than gasoline is, and now, today, up here in Indiana, it took me a little bit when I first got here, but when we attack a gasoline tanker, I hate to say it, because it doesn’t pay as good, but we’re in and out of there in a couple of hours. Once we know that we’ve got any contamination [inaudible 00:03:42] stuff, it’s upright, it’s gone, and it’s out of there.

You’re talking about saving eight, nine hours, the traffic, the mitigation, the secondary accidents, cars on roadway that shouldn’t be, trucks trying to cut around, because our truck traffic volume up here, it’s tenfold compared what it was in Florida and they will cut through any neighborhood they can just to try to get around it up here. So, that’s changed a lot.

But I remember me and an officer, and the [firefighters], and especially the guys from the environmental company that were there from the company, we were nose to nose, toe to toe. And I was only a driver. Richard Kauff is like, “Are you sure?” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah.” We didn’t want to push that envelope too hard. We sat down there having lunch and I was fuming going, “We could be done here in about four hours.” And a lot of guys were thinking, “Hey, we’re paid by the hour to be here.” I’m like, “I don’t care. I just want to do the job and I want to get onto the next job.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, I feel the same way.

Mike Scheidt:

I just want to get onto the next one. There’s something waiting. Somebody’s waiting for us because we’re here that we don’t need to be here. That’s my biggest thing. So, that was the beginning. But man, that was a blowout.

Shelli Hawkins:

I can’t imagine.

Daniel Williams:

It’s funny though. If that happened today though, you wouldn’t even get an argument with anybody. You’d just be like, “Okay, do it your way.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, I would. I’d just be like, “Okay, we’ll be over here and just let me know if we can do anything.” And I might walk up occasionally and point something out to them and say, “You’ve got weight here. You’re going to take weight away from here. Gravity’s going to take over, just so you’re aware of this. I’m not telling you how to do your job, but have you thought about that?” And then walk away or see what they want to say. It’s not worth the battle. The old saying is, you get more with sugar than you do salt. It’s 100% true.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. Several years ago I was on the scene of a tanker on its side and it was a fuel tanker, but it had motor oil inside of it instead, and there was another towing company doing something that wasn’t going to work and I mentioned it to the chief of command that was on that scene. I said, “Hey, this isn’t going to work. He’s fixing to hurt somebody. I’m walking off,” and I turned my back and I walked away, and as I made the third step, cables broke and went flying through the air and it was almost like one of those movie scenes where there’s an explosion in the background and everyone just looked at me. I’m like, “Hey, it’s not rocket science, it’s just physics.”

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly. That’s it.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

The best thing for us, when that tanker turned over they were doing a live update on TV when it turned over and there was a guy-

Shelli Hawkins:

No.

Mike Scheidt:

Standing on top of it with a pump-

Shelli Hawkins:

No.

Mike Scheidt:

… and when it rolled over that guy bailed off. He hit the ground, tumbled and rolled, and you watch the gasoline shooting out of all five hoses like somebody just turned the pump on. So, it even made that predicament 10 times worse. Now, had that happened today, that thing would’ve been viral in about three hours.

Laura Dolan:

Oh, 100%.

Daniel Williams:

Oh man.

Mike Scheidt:

That was before cell phones. We had pagers back then. We didn’t even have cell phones.

Laura Dolan:

Pagers. Those take me back. Wow. That is…

Daniel Williams:

Man. See, I’m even old enough. I had a pager. When I was a young teenager, I’d be out riding my bicycle, hanging out with people, and my pager would go off and I’d just pedal as hard as I could to the south end of town and dad’s waiting on me. “Hey, we got to go.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

So it wasn’t for all your girlfriends?

Daniel Williams:

No, no. They didn’t care about me.

Mike Scheidt:

My son is very… They grew up in a different era, they really did. I love my son. He is very enamored in what we do and loves what I do. He sees my career at a different timeframe than his older brother did and doesn’t see how I started and the time involved and how much, I don’t want to say easier it was, but you had less traffic back then.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

More of an awareness. I don’t want to say I don’t want them in the industry, but honestly, I’ll tell you, I don’t. I don’t, because first of all, I don’t want him working for me or working here because I don’t want anybody ever say, you’ve got what you’ve got because your dad’s the boss or your dad’s involved in this or something like that.

He’s run the truck, he knows how to run a rotator. I’ve let him do a lot of lifts. I’ve let him do a lot of stuff. He can load cars, he can unload cars and stuff, and he is his own man. But what I want him to do is pursue his own dreams in life. I want him to do his own passions in life. And so be it, if this becomes his passion after he’s experienced some things, I’m fine with that. But I don’t want him to see where I’m at in my position now after decades of him not being there and understanding the sacrifice, the hours understanding missing events, missing things before that I missed for his brother. He doesn’t understand that part of it, because he never saw that part of it. He sees now where dad has some more time or takes the time.

So, I don’t want him to push his dreams aside of other things when he thinks I’m just going to start right here. Because everybody sees you do something they go, “It is just so easy.” And I’m like, “You don’t understand. It took me decades to make it look this easy.” So-

Daniel Williams:

Everyone makes fun of me, because I walk around with the remote control. They all call it a fanny pack.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly. They do.

Daniel Williams:

It’s easy. All you’re doing is playing a video game. I’m like, okay, here you go.

Mike Scheidt:

But they’ll say it’s a video game. I said, “Well, here you go.” I said, “Make that thing fly through the air. By the way, don’t shake it up.” So.

Shelli Hawkins:

What year was it that the remote control came around? Because I was going to ask you guys a question about that. And different manufacturers call it different things. We call it Raptor, we call it whatever.

Mike Scheidt:

Well, I-

Daniel Williams:

We had our first remote control ever on a rollback was in 2004. That was a new build for us, but I know that 98 ish probably, 97, they were starting to go wireless. Does that sound right, Mike?

Mike Scheidt:

I had my first one in 97-

Daniel Williams:

[inaudible 00:10:22].

Mike Scheidt:

… but it was two joysticks that went up and down, side to side and you had to flip toggle switches so you couldn’t do all your functions at the same time. So, if I remember it correctly, I could boom up and down with the left joystick and then I had to flip a switch if I wanted to… So you flip the switch to get the winches to work, then they would just be the winches up and down. Oh yeah, they went up and down, they didn’t go side to side. So, you went up and down with your winches and then you would flip your switch on your right one and that would give your boom in and out. So it was in and out, up and down. Yeah, so in and out, up and down. And the swing was on the left one. You’d start doing something, you’d swing a little bit, you’d flip a switch, you’d maybe boom out or boom down. You’d flip a switch, you’d boom down, you’d swing a little bit. And it would take forever to get a load around the back of your truck from side to side.

And that remote stayed in place until 2002 or three, I think it was right about that era is when it changed. And then you enter proportional controls after that. Because those remotes are not proportional. It was on, it was boom. There was no feathering at all. It was wide open.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, see I was kind of reminiscing like the old 50 30s, like a 97 ish era where you had one of the boxes was wireless, which was cool-

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

… and then the other one was had the big coiled up wire on the other side of the truck.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

And they were just on, off, on, off. And they only worked half the time.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes. Only worked half the time. That’s fast. Yeah. Only worked half the time. And let’s face it, technology has made us more efficient and I think look better when we do things. It’s also a downfall to our industry, because it makes people want to just do the fancy part of running the controls and don’t realize all the time it takes to make the rigging happen before.

Daniel Williams:

Even from an invoicing standpoint, the job that you and I used to take four or five hours on, we’re now doing them in 45 minutes.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Williams:

And the equipment has increased four times in the amount, but they want to pay for 45 minutes.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

And I know I’m just beating a dead horse there, but we got really efficient and the equipment got really expensive and now we are being told we need to work for half as much. And that drives me absolutely [nuts].

Mike Scheidt:

Yep, absolutely. When I see a shop rate, and our shop rate for trucks around here is $205 an hour now, and that’s for a mechanic. And let’s just say your average mechanic or even a high-end mechanic, his tool investment, and I’m moving on the high side, we’ll just say it’s $150,000 and he is getting 200 bucks an hour. Well, our average investment on a heavy duty side startup nowadays-

Daniel Williams:

Half a million.

Mike Scheidt:

… seven 50, half a million

Daniel Williams:

For a small heavy.

Mike Scheidt:

For a small heavy, right.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

If you get into the rotator side, your investment’s a million bucks. That’s a good plateau right now-

Daniel Williams:

Yup.

Mike Scheidt:

… to sit about, by the time you tool it, put it together, put the guy in it, and they still want us to work for that $200 to $400 an hour range. And I’m like, doing that math right there, we should be working for $2,000 an hour-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

… and saying, “Hey, I know this job only takes 45 minutes, but because of industry standards, the book time tells me I can get six hours for that job. Just because I can do it three is because I’ve learned to do it so well.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, that’s an acceptable practice in the repair industry.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely.

Daniel Williams:

Not anywhere else.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. Our industry is the one that always is supposed to take the burden. If you do non-consensual work, say you do police work, well, let’s just say you do for layman’s terms, to make it easy, 10 wrecks a year and of those wrecks, you get paid for six of those because other ones are, say you left on the highway, trailers burning down like I have, and the guy just pulls out and leaves it there. There’s no recourse because I can tell you right now, 45% of the owner operator trucks running down the highway these days, and even a lot of the company trucks, they have tractor insurance, but they don’t have the coverage for incidents for environmental, they don’t have it for… And then when you get a truck right now, you have to deal with a cargo adjuster or a trailer adjuster because he’s leased onto it. And the guy that owns the tractor, he’s got PPI, that’s all he’s got. It’s all it takes him to get in business to get on somebody because everyone says, “You can run under our DOT authority. Well, we insure the loads and stuff.” It’s a gamble. They just take the risk that they’re not going to get caught and-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, well we just had this conversation with our accountant yesterday about one of the largest carriers in the country right now that mostly exclusively hires subcontractors to pull their own trailers. And almost a hundred percent of these subcontractors have really old worn out equipment that was clapped out 10 years ago and they don’t have any coverages and they just want to walk away from this stuff. As long as you’ve got the collateral, you’re maybe okay, but you and I both, every time we get a phone call for a burn job, I know that you have the same heart rate that I do. It just skyrockets, because you don’t know if you’re going to get paid that day.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep, it does. And even on some of your bigger companies, if you pull up and you see, and I’m just throwing out [inaudible 00:16:26], you see Swift on the trailer, you see UPS, you see anybody, I mean Steven’s Transport, you see the trailer, you think, “Okay, I got somebody here.” But then you see the tractor and you go, this is going to be one of those where-

Daniel Williams:

It could go south.

Mike Scheidt:

… [inaudible 00:16:42] 15, 1600 and has… Daniel and myself, our job there is because we are not the CFOs, but we are in charge of controlling the actual expense that we have to occur ourselves, the burden that actually goes on our company. You have to decide in a split moment, how much am I going to invest of our company money upfront without our knowing of a return in the end.

Daniel Williams:

Absolutely.

Mike Scheidt:

And that’s where our drivers don’t understand, is when we get there they think, “It’s a truck wreck, it’s a truck wreck,” or, “It’s an accident.” They just think the tree appeared all of a sudden with dollar bills on it. And I’m like, “No, we have to determine really quickly how much investment are we going to put forth and actually get paid for.” And the end result is we have to make this thing go away. We don’t have a choice.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

We have to make this go away. But what is the risk? How much are we going to put ourselves out there for upfront not knowing if we’re going to get paid back? And that is where I have learned over the last 15 years, maybe a little longer. And I give Jeff Russell from Kauff… When he bought Kauff, Jeff taught me a lot of the business side of it. Jeff allowed me to always explore my recovery talents. He gave me every tool just like the Kauffs did, and said, “You go out there and you just conquer the world on that side there.”

Jeff would sit there and say, “Okay, now look at this from a business standpoint. We need to make money,” and would show me what the actual burden was to our company and he’d break it down for it. So now when I do a wreck, the first thing I show up on and I’m going, A, what are the odds that we’re getting paid right away? Am I getting paid in 30 days, 60 days, however, or if we’re going to get paid at all? So then you have to decide, okay, what’s our investment and what’s the quickest way I can make this go away and make a lot of money?

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, because there are certain jobs out there, and I know we’re definitely, you and I are both more focused on the heavy duty side than the light duty side of things, but there are certain jobs out there that if I know there’s probably going to be a lack of coverage or a lack of commitment to somebody wanting to pay the invoice, I’m going to leave things behind some days, whether it be, like in my area, a load of corn, for example, get spilled out in the ditch. I mean, realistically, we don’t have to clean it. It’s going to go away on its own or a load of gravel or something. It’s not hurting anything. It’s laying in the grass. But if I know that there’s probably going to be a potential of lack of issues with payments, I might just leave it there or just get the bulk of it and leave. And then once there’s some confirmation, I might go tidy it up later. But there’s other days where I’ve flat out walked away from things and I says, “Look guys, this ain’t my problem.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yep, exactly.

Daniel Williams:

1989-

Mike Scheidt:

It’s off the highway.

Daniel Williams:

1989 Winnebago that’s sitting off in a field that’s burned to the ground. I just said, “You know what? This isn’t really my problem today. I guess the state can deal with this.” And it’s a bad attitude to have, but at the end of the day…

Mike Scheidt:

It’s a business.

Daniel Williams:

It’s a business. I have to be profitable. There’s…

Shelli Hawkins:

When you tow that burn job back to your shop, back to your yard, it’s taking up your real estate that you own and you’re going to get paid on-

Daniel Williams:

And I still got to get rid of it later. It doesn’t end that day.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

It’s-

Mike Scheidt:

I mean, honestly, I have one in the yard right now. We got two weeks ago that I wasn’t here, didn’t even find out about it until two days later that we were called by DNR because they had a floating barge on the river. A barge.

Shelli Hawkins:

What?

Mike Scheidt:

A bake together barge. And so we trucked it in on three different flatbeds and they dumped it in the yard out there. And I’m like, “Where did we get this from?” And the driver started telling me. I’m going, “So, did you guys not think to make any phone calls or something?” And they go, well, no, they called. And I’m like, “We’re not the garbage company.”

Daniel Williams:

Sounds like the moped we hauled in yesterday.

Shelli Hawkins:

You have?

Daniel Williams:

It had fallen out of somebody’s truck on the way to the landfill.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. [inaudible 00:21:01]

Daniel Williams:

Why do I have this in my yard now?

Laura Dolan:

Oh my gosh.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly.

Laura Dolan:

Put it up for auction.

Mike Scheidt:

I have these strapped together, 55 gallon plastic drums with homemade pieces on top of and they were using, at the time, they used a jet feed to push it around. It had a homemade boom on it with a crank with electric winch.

Shelli Hawkins:

What?

Mike Scheidt:

The jet ski was blowing up and stuff and I’m looking at thing going. And I said, “Guys, you know what we have to do. We have to pay to get rid of all of this.” He goes, “Well, you don’t think we can scrap it?” And I said, “Scrap what? It’s plastic.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

Or you get a police officer that a boat will be flipped over somewhere and they’ll go, “Hey, you got a boat.” And I’m like, “Really? You going to send 40, 30, $40,000 in fiberglass repair and you’re going to float that thing? Because just because I got a boat doesn’t mean nothing about it.”

Daniel Williams:

I’m just glad I’m not the only person dealing with this every day. It just makes me feel special inside that know that there’s people sharing my pain.

Mike Scheidt:

And so those thought processes have to roll over onto your everyday jobs also of you have to find that balance between when your customer’s there is obviously I’m getting paid by my customer. I don’t want to take advantage of them, but somewhere we have to be profitable. And how much personnel, how much equipment do I want to put on this scene to make it look good or to make it safe, first of all? It is going to be safe first, but you can overrun a scene with too much equipment also.

So you play that balancing act all day long. Even on a regular call, you have some drivers that are more efficient and more talented, and you have to juggle that through the day and say, “Hey, I know this driver. I want him to do this job, because he’s more proficient. He’s also more efficient.” And sometimes they’re like, “Well, you’re giving him all the good jobs. You’re giving him this.” And I said, “Well, he’s mastered his craft. You may have been doing it just as long, but he’s mastered this part.”

And they don’t understand that because in today’s day and age, every society and every industry has those people that just think that it should be equal. It should be fair. Everybody has this variation that everybody should be treated exactly the same and, to a point, everybody should be treated the same but to a point. Your skillset has to dictate what you actually can do.

Shelli Hawkins:

So I’m going to hop in here and tell you a story about a company that you guys know. Was highly impressed with the practice that they have. The folks down at Santa Fe Towing in Lenexa, Kansas, John Kupchin, Doug Wallace, Kaylee-

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Shelli Hawkins:

… and Kyle Kupchin, all those guys. When people come to work for them, no matter where they’re going to be working, it doesn’t matter if they’re an operator or in the office staff, wherever the case may be, a tech mechanic, it doesn’t matter. They take a personality test. And Doug Wallace will tell you he thought that that was the most ridiculous thing they ever thought of. And so I’m pretty sure that John knows this, so I’m not sharing any kind of secrets here, but what it does, and Rene and I actually took these tests, what it does as a person that is managing you, you go back into that file and it shows you all the strengths and weaknesses genuinely of this person even before you see them on the workplace.

And then what you can do also with the company that they work with is you can say, “Now, let’s take Michael and let’s take Daniel and how are they going to work together?” And it will come up with an assessment to say, here are some things they’re going to be really good at and here’s some things that you might have to deal with.” Doug Wallace looks at these personality tests every day. Just throwing that out there.

And it’s what you guys are talking about that you have learned through experience, right?

Daniel Williams:

Yes.

Mike Scheidt:

The hard way.

Daniel Williams:

The hard way. There’s definitely people that I’ve worked with that just… You can’t see me, we’re on a video chat now but we’re not going to see video when this comes out. We just butt heads.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

And it’s not personal, it’s just personality clash is all it is. But they’re onto something there and-

Mike Scheidt:

[inaudible 00:25:01] apps are… That personality test, that’s a good thing to have.

Shelli Hawkins:

I’ll put you in touch if you guys don’t have contact with those folks. You know-

Mike Scheidt:

Oh, I know Doug and Joe really well.

Shelli Hawkins:

You’ve got [inaudible 00:25:11]-

Daniel Williams:

We all know each other, but they’re in a whole different… I’m in the middle of nowhere.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

We have a small crew. I’m looking at Santa Fe stuff, just for example, they got 52 power units registered with the DOT. That’s huge compared to me.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

So the problems that they’re dealing with, butting heads, are significantly greater than mine. And Mike’s problems are way bigger than mine too. I’m just a small fish in the sea.

Shelli Hawkins:

But you-

Mike Scheidt:

Oh, I’m too. But it’s growing. The city’s growing. When I moved here, I was like, “Man, this is a small town. This is great.” Well, 13 years later, the city’s overtaken us, and I keep telling Jamie, I said, “There’ll become a day we don’t respond to the west side of Indianapolis for accidents and stuff.” And he looked at me and I said, “I remember in Miami you could get across Miami in about 20 minutes to be all the way on the west side by Tamiami Trail takes you about two hours to get there now.”

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. And Jamie’s like, “Oh, you’re right,” because he has to do Monster Jam down there.

Shelli Hawkins:

I didn’t think about it that way. Yes.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, Jamie’s like, “Yeah, it takes an hour to go four miles.” I said, “Exactly.” I said, “In the 70s and 80s down there, I came on and cost about 86, 87 it didn’t take long to get to the west side of Miami. And when you went to Miami, it was like going to a foreign country, because we were coming from the sticks and West Palm and Fort Pierce area. So, it will come a point where you can’t travel that far.” And then I told him, “Your workload gets more busy where you are, so you don’t travel as far, but you still got the same time involved.”

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s one thing that we’ve noticed, even in the middle of nowhere, is jobs that I used to do, like a basic tow job, it would be three hours, they’re almost four hours now just because dealing with more people and more traffic lights.

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Daniel Williams:

It affects me even though I don’t have the city issues.

Shelli Hawkins:

Interesting.

Daniel Williams:

And I have a mental block too when it comes to billing. I’ve been billing that job for three hours for the last 15 years, how come it’s taken you four?

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly.

Daniel Williams:

I have to adjust my thinking. It’s not just my people. They’re not being slow. It’s just times are changing.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes, absolutely. The rigging we have now makes our jobs easier, but it still takes longer for some of them to adapt to using it. And the downside to every operator now, they see every gimmick and everything on the internet or-

Daniel Williams:

Oh yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

… on social media and they’ve got to have it, got to have it. I’m like, “Guys, we don’t need to invest $10,000 in something we’re going to use twice in the next two years. You got to look at it and say, ‘what’s our return on the investment?'” And they don’t. They just say, “I want this. I want this gimmick. I want everything you could think of.” And I’m like, “We’ve never needed it in 20 years.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

“We’ve made do without it.” And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great inventions out there. Guys have done great things, but they also serve a market. And if you are not in that market, you just don’t buy it because you want it because once every two years you need it.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

It becomes something on your truck that’s in the way.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I’m kind of a simple man. I got a lot of cool toys. I mean, I think-

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes, you do. And I sold them to you.

Daniel Williams:

Yes, Shelli and Mike, they know the equipment I have.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

I don’t have junk. I’ve got nice stuff, but I don’t have just [huge] amounts of it packed in my boxes where I can’t get in. Especially when I moved into the 80 ton, I really had to adjust what was important to me-

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

… and what was just in the way. I carry very minimal hand tools in my personal rotator. I just don’t need them. I don’t tow every day with it. I’ve got an impact and I got a socket set and a set of wrenches and I’ve got-

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Daniel Williams:

… all my air line fittings. But our 50-ton unit, it tows all the time, but it also recovers. It’s equipped to the gills with screwdriver sets and pry bars and deep sockets and shallow sockets and metric wrenches and standard wrenches. And I’m like, “Hey, I got a Crescent wrench.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yes, absolutely.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes.

Mike Scheidt:

I’m the same way. I did away with a lot of the three eight stuff, a lot of small stuff I did. I downsized it because I’m going, I’m not there to fix your vehicle.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

If I need to patch an air line to get it back, if I need a cage, a brake or something, hey, I got that stuff to do it. And if not, I got a chop saw. I just cut it off and we’ll get onto the next one.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, so when it comes to gimmicks and new ideas and the got to have this thing, I’m always like, man, that’d be cool. But then I’m also like, where am I going to put this?

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

I mean, if it’s not in the truck, it doesn’t get used. Let’s be real.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

I was just thinking yesterday, I’ve got a nice set of Sonetics headsets that Ron sold me several years ago. I love them, but there’s no room in my truck half the time for them anymore-

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Daniel Williams:

… and they sit on the floor in the office right now, which is not, I mean, they’re out in the open, but we get to a job site and I’m like, well, crap. I don’t use them because I don’t have them.

Mike Scheidt:

They’re right there.

Shelli Hawkins:

Nice.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, they’re right there.

Shelli Hawkins:

Nice. I love it. Okay, quick question-

Mike Scheidt:

It-

Shelli Hawkins:

Pop quiz.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, all right.

Shelli Hawkins:

Pop quiz real quick.

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Shelli Hawkins:

Best innovation for tools in the tow truck in the last 10 years. 10 years.

Daniel Williams:

Tools or equipment? Where are we at here?

Shelli Hawkins:

Tools or equipment, it doesn’t matter. Just anything outside the physical tow truck itself. That you use on a regular basis and you can’t see living without it right now. 10 years.

Daniel Williams:

I don’t know. Synthetic rope. Let’s just say it. That-

Mike Scheidt:

I was just going to say, your synthetics and your synthetic flings, absolutely. They just make life so much easier on your body.

Daniel Williams:

It’s changed the game. If I was to get in a truck right now that was equipped with steel rope, I would knot up the rope in three seconds flat, because I am so spoiled and accustomed to a new way of thinking.

But outside of synthetic rope on a winch, I mean, I don’t know. I got some really cool, they’re made by Peck and Hale, some container lifting lugs.

Shelli Hawkins:

Okay.

Daniel Williams:

I don’t do a lot of containers, but I had a specific job that was going to require me to move a bunch of them in a short timeframe so I was looking at these different lugs. I don’t know. I didn’t have them until a year ago. They’re pretty cool. I like them.

Shelli Hawkins:

Interesting.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I mean, outside of that, chain hasn’t changed, shackles haven’t changed. I mean…

Mike Scheidt:

Lifting blocks or lifting blocks, they made them lighter, but a lot of times lifting blocks… it depends on what you’re doing with them. If I’m doing heavy lift work, I like a heavier lift block because it adds to the down hall weight if you come back down.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

So, if you ask one thing, I guess what I’d have to say is probably the air connections that the guys do now, the way we connect to air now versus the way we did decades ago. We’re just tapping an air tank. Our industry now is proficient in airing up vehicles in that sense right there.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

And I’d say that’s probably a huge advantage now, because it guarantees you’re airing it up the right way, to a point.

Daniel Williams:

But it makes you miss the old days, because back in the day-

Mike Scheidt:

It does.

Daniel Williams:

… all you needed was a one inch wrench to take the compressor line off a truck and they were all the same.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely, yes.

Daniel Williams:

I miss those days.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. It was so fast and absolutely… There’s a lot of gimmicks out there that guy have and everything depends on what you become used to using. And I look at something when I use it, is it going to make my job faster? Am I going to be more efficient? If just using it slows me down, that ain’t an invention, that’s just somebody making money off of something and adding a step to what I have to do.

So, Daniel and I think we’re kind of old school, we simplify things and we make it simple. We really do and straightforward. So, I don’t get into a ton and I still tow quite a bit, I do. I jump in everything we have out there.

I think some of our biggest hurdles in the towing industry is going to be towing vehicles soon because you just can’t drag them anymore when it comes to cars. You can’t just manhandle them and drag them up without doing some sort of damage to them. I see the speedy crane that the Europeans have and stuff coming more and more necessary in our market, and that will add a whole new level of challenge to the operator that uses it and understanding the lifting part of it. As far as trucks go, they just slam them to the ground now. They make them as low as they can. They want to make lots drag on them and they make them the same as cars. They want to make them efficient.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah. I wish somebody that had stroke in the industry could just get with the engineering departments of Daimler and PACCAR-

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

… and set them all down and be like, “Look, we don’t care what you’re doing, but you have to be able to relocate these things when they’re dead.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

“You have to be able to move it one way or another.” I’m a skinny guy. I can’t crawl under half the trucks anymore, because the far ends are so low to the ground just to pull a drive shaft. And I’m just like, “Where’s this going? In 10 years, how are we going to do this?”

Mike Scheidt:

Allison is on our back door, so we do a lot with Allison over here. I know Miller does a lot with them, but we move their stuff around for them a lot. The engineers tell us that it would cost them about $12 a unit to make it a disconnect feature in the back of the transmission for the drive shaft, but their profit ratio is so small that $12 per vehicle is too much.

Daniel Williams:

I can’t believe that.

Mike Scheidt:

Yup.

Daniel Williams:

I don’t know.

Mike Scheidt:

Well, they go by the amount of money that they would have to invest in designing it, engineering it, testing it, the amount that they would sell, the different variations of the products that they sell. So, when he says that he’s basing that on a million per units probably-

Shelli Hawkins:

Exactly.

Mike Scheidt:

… over the course. Now the initial cost of that, he was talking about for them to design a transmission, market it in a class eight truck for a heavy spec truck, he said they’re spending a billion dollars in research and engineering. That’s what he tells me. Now, whether that’s true or not, because you have to take into account tooling the line, training guys, machining parts, engineering, product failure testing, having a place to actually do it, putting in vehicles, making the software match up to it. So yeah, maybe that’s closer to. I mean there’s things behind the scenes that we don’t put numbers to, but he said layman’s cost would add to a vehicle about $12 to make that disconnect. I said, “That’d be great.” And he goes, “Do you know how long it takes to design it?” He said you’d look at a decade. A decade, he said.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah. Things we have today they started designing in the early 2000s.

Shelli Hawkins:

Wow, that’s incredible.

Daniel Williams:

Henry Ford would be rolling over in his grave.

Mike Scheidt:

Oh, absolutely.

But there’s a lot of today’s inventions that we get in the towing industry, they’re just adaptations. I call it evolving. I don’t call them anything new. It’s just an evolvement. I mean, all your tow trucks come with the same design in mind. Until somebody comes through with a breakthrough design that is completely different from what we do right now, it’s just an evolvement. It’s not-

Shelli Hawkins:

Agree.

Mike Scheidt:

… anything new.

Shelli Hawkins:

100%. I’m going to ask one last question for both of you guys. So, we’ve covered a ton of ground today. We’ve answered a lot of questions. We talked about a lot of different aspects of the towing industry and there are folks out there that aspire to be as knowledgeable as you guys are with all the tools in the toolbox that you have, able to communicate effectively on scene and also billing out successfully for all the things. What advice do you have for these towers out there that aspire to be seasoned, towers, respected riggers out there in the towing industry today? Where do they start? And this philosophical, if you want.

Daniel Williams:

This is an area I struggled with when I was young, so I can speak with honesty here. It’s 10 times worse with our new generation of people, but if you can just be slow to speak and quick to listen your life will become 10 times easier.

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. And when you see something happening and someone’s telling you to do something, it may not be at that moment right then, because you may be in the heat of an accident scene or something, ask them why did we do that? I know we did it and I know how it worked, but ask them why. Ask questions and then read and don’t be afraid to go out and try things yourself in your off time and spend some time. Our industry, if you want to be proficient at it, it requires you to give up your time.

Daniel Williams:

Absolutely.

Mike Scheidt:

Practicing. You have to realize that you’re going sacrifice your time and that you’re not going to get paid for that time. If you want to be proficient at what we do, you have to give your time. And that’s hard. That’s why I don’t want my son to do it, because I know the amount of time that I sacrificed just riding with other operators on my day off or my night off, heavy operators. Just going out to jobs with guys that they were getting paid on that I went just to experience the job with them and see how they did things. So, the biggest thing you can do, if you truly want to reach that pinnacle, you have to be willing in your heart to sacrifice your time knowing you are not getting paid right now, but in 10 years from now, 15 years from now, it’s going to pay you 15 fold.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, there’s a bigger picture there if you want to look into the future.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

It’s just our generation with social media. Everybody can hide behind the screen so everybody has a comment. Everybody has an excuse or a comeback and it drives me nuts. Even dealing with my own children that when I ask them to do something and they instantly have a comeback. I’m like, “We don’t need to do this. We just need to take the trash out.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

It’s just simplicity. Just take the information you’ve been given and go complete the task, and if you have a problem with it, we’ll discuss it in a more calming environment, not on the side of the highway.

Mike Scheidt:

Right.

Daniel Williams:

There’s a lot of things we do on the side of the road and I’ll be like, “Hey, we’ll discuss this later.” I’ll just talk about it. And we do, we have good little conversations at the kitchen table downstairs.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep, absolutely.

Shelli Hawkins:

I love it. Thank you guys. This has been a lot of fun.

Daniel Williams:

I don’t feel like we stayed on task.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Laura Dolan:

That’s the whole point of the podcast. And I want to point out the irony behind this podcast because both Daniel and Mike, you say you guys aren’t huge podcast listeners, but you guys could have your own podcast. I could listen to you both talk all day about this stuff. So this is just fascinating.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes, just thinking about it.

Mike Scheidt:

When Shelli asked me, she said, “Who would you think about if you could?” I said, I didn’t even hesitate. I don’t even think she got [inaudible 00:41:29], I said, “Call Daniel Williams.”

Laura Dolan:

That’s great.

Mike Scheidt:

“Because him and I,” I said, “I have so much respect.”

Daniel Williams:

We communicate well.

Mike Scheidt:

We communicate well-

Laura Dolan:

Oh yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

And we feed off of each other.

Laura Dolan:

You do.

Mike Scheidt:

I see him-

Laura Dolan:

You can see that bond-

Mike Scheidt:

… do things and I’m like-

Laura Dolan:

… right away.

Mike Scheidt:

We just feed off of each other and I think he just, with his kids, with his wife, with everything he does in life, I’m like, I love him to death. He’s like a brother that I’d never had. And I’m like, we have very similar interests, we throw things off of each other and we can kid and joke around and we’d be like, “Hey, you know what?” It’s like I tell him when you’re doing driving competition, nobody cares. Just have fun with it and we just go with it. Our personalities just seem to match and the fact we are both so OCD, we are, oh my Lord. We’re both that way.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yes. I know that.

Daniel Williams:

Mike could send me a picture of something he goofed up and I could just respond with, “That was [a bad move] and he’ll agree with me.” We don’t even have to argue about it. We both have a good laugh.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep, absolutely.

Shelli Hawkins:

Mike, my turn to tell a story real quick. The first time I ever got an order from Daniel Williams when I was working at AW Direct, it was a list as long as my arm with every single diameter and length and capacity and shoulder grab or whatever-

Daniel Williams:

Part numbers.

Shelli Hawkins:

And part numbers.

Mike Scheidt:

Oh yes.

Daniel Williams:

But then I’m looking at this list, I’d never seen anything like this in my entire life. And I’m like, “This one is very special,” but I made him go through the list and tell me what he was going to use for every single piece. I said, “Okay, this is great. Explain it to me. Tell me how you use it.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Prove it to me. And I’m like, “Oh.”

Daniel Williams:

We didn’t even get into your topics that you told us we were supposed to as far as tooling-

Shelli Hawkins:

Doesn’t matter.

Daniel Williams:

… but there’s a specific reason why we’ll-

Shelli Hawkins:

Bring it back.

Daniel Williams:

When I make an order with something, I don’t tell the person on the other end of the phone to send me this. I give them a part number. And we’ve experienced this together recently, I think.

Mike Scheidt:

Yeah.

Daniel Williams:

Is the part number that I got wasn’t what I wanted, because the part number is different for the American version versus the United Kingdom version.

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Daniel Williams:

I was just blown away. I’m like, “What the heck?” It changed my life, because I’m like, “Well, there’s no absolute truth no more, man. My part numbers are wrong.”

Mike Scheidt:

Yes.

Shelli Hawkins:

Everything is up in the air.

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

Yep. That’s a fact. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

And so-

Mike Scheidt:

When it comes to rigging, I had to take one of the rotators and we changed the hooks out on it. And the guy, he goes, “This is a brand new hook.” And I said, “Yeah, and we cut it,” and I said, “Hey, I really want you to. You’re going to Flemish that eye.” And he looked at me, he goes, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t want to turn back.” And he goes, “Oh yeah, I know. Yeah, I could do that.” I’m thinking If you can’t, you’re not the one to install that hook, because I want them a certain way-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah.

Mike Scheidt:

And I want that tight. And he did it. Hey, he knew exactly how to do it. I watched the whole time standing there and what I did was I let him tell me what he was doing as he was going along and I’m like, yep, you know what you’re doing. Oh yeah, I’m watching. I’m like, yep. And we get done. I played off like I had no idea what he was doing, but I watched him do it and I knew he was doing it right. And I’m-

Daniel Williams:

Yeah, and you made the guy feel good, like he was really challenging somebody for the day.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly. And that was my case. Hey, this guy paid attention. He was showing me all the little things he was doing. He was just tapping on one of the strands with his little pick, and he was just tapping it back in line. He goes, this is just tightening up the braid on it. And I’m thinking, that’s really cool. And I’m thinking the guy knows what he’s doing because tightening up that braid makes that loop that much stronger.

Daniel Williams:

Yes.

Mike Scheidt:

And I’m like, yeah. But I’m very anal. We’re both. Our rigging is the gospel. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, screw shackles, all hang in the box a certain way. Only ones go here. Don’t put any of my stuff back on my truck. Lay it on there. I’ll tell you what side of the truck to lay it on or I’ll put it away.

Daniel Williams:

Well, when you put the screw pin shackles in the truck, the pins have to all be uniform and facing-

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely.

Daniel Williams:

… either all way or away from each other. And they can’t be pointed down, because they’ll unscrew each other.

Mike Scheidt:

Exactly.

Daniel Williams:

Or they’re going to fall down. Hell yeah. I went through this this morning putting stuff away.

Shelli Hawkins:

Do you guys both have a good psychologist, like a therapist because…

Laura Dolan:

They have each other.

Daniel Williams:

I talk to the Lord a lot.

Shelli Hawkins:

[inaudible 00:45:48]

There you go. That’s just as good. I love it. You guys have been awesome. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you guys. We’ve learned a lot. It’s always the best podcast where Laura and I do-

Laura Dolan:

Yes.

Shelli Hawkins:

… none of the talking. That’s the best kind. So you will-

Mike Scheidt:

I appreciate it.

Laura Dolan:

… make our job easier.

Shelli Hawkins:

You will be back. You will come back. Maybe we’ll throw a Judd in there or a JR Cadian and just have a great big party. Who knows?

Mike Scheidt:

Absolutely. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

Perfect. Love it.

Laura Dolan:

It was a pleasure, gentlemen. Thank you so much for your time.

Daniel Williams:

Thank you for having us on. It was enjoyable.

Mike Scheidt:

It was. Yep.

Shelli Hawkins:

We appreciate you.

Mike Scheidt:

Thank you guys.

Shelli Hawkins:

Thank you.

Mike Scheidt:

See y’all.

Laura Dolan:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast. For more episodes, go to traxero.com/podcast and to find out more about how we can hook your towing business up with our towing management software and impound yard solutions, please visit traxero.com or go to the contact page linked at the bottom of this podcast blog.

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay